Best Songs About Liverpool

Liverpool is a city synonymous with song, or as The La's Lee Mavers wrote, 'Timeless Melody'. 

Through the generations - from the Quarrymen and the Beatles to the post-punk of Echo and the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes to current success stories, The Mysterines and Bill Ryder Jones, great songwriting beats at the very heart of the city's music scene. 

With ICMP launching its undergraduate music courses in Liverpool, here's our overview of some of the essential tracks and songs to have been inspired by Merseyside, Liverpool and the wider region. 

The Mighty Wah | 'Heart As Big As Liverpool' 

Scouse folk hero Pete Wylie is a musical legend in the city, a writer of anthemic songs loved by many of Liverpool's residents and beyond. 

Initially, one third of the infamous Crucial Three post-punk group alongside fellow Liverpool-based artists Julian Cope and Ian McCulloch at the end of the seventies, Wylie has released plenty of music over the years through various projects including The Mighty Wah and under his own name. 

His hits include 'The Story of the Blues', 'Come Back' and 'Sinful' alongside the Liverpool Football Club (FC) anthem, 'Heart as Big as Liverpool'. This heroic track celebrates Wylie's pride in his home city. 

He still writes and records, with a string of live dates lined up for 2025. 

Find out more

The Beatles | 'Penny Lane' 

Of course, it's hard to discuss Liverpool music and songwriting without mentioning the Fab Four. Famously, many of their hits were informed by the world around them during their formative years growing up in the city. 

'Strawberry Fields' was inspired by the leafy park near to where John Lennon was raised. 'Eleanor Rigby' is supposedly inspired by Liverpool's residents while perhaps most famously, 'Penny Lane' is about a Liverpool street in the suburbs where Paul McCartney grew up. 

This song, written by Paul, is full of descriptive imagery of the shops and locals he remembers from his childhood. It references a barbers, fire station and local bank, many of which existed in real life and is one of the finest moments in an untouchable song catalogue. 

The Bangles | 'Going Down to Liverpool' 

Although it was the eighties rock band, The Bangles, who made 'Going Down to Liverpool' a hit, it was actually Kimberley Rew of Katrina and the Waves who wrote the song.

The original version was written for the latter's 1982 debut EP, 'Shock Horror!', with Kimberley singing lead vocals. 

Although it didn't chart too highly, 'Going Down to Liverpool' is ranked as one of the top ten tracks by the Bangles on Spotify while the video also features Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy as a chauffeur.

It's also an interesting musical moment for an LA new wave band to cover a song about the city. 

Gerry & The Pacemakers | 'Ferry Across the Mersey'

Perhaps one of the most famous songs written about Liverpool is 'Ferry Across the Mersey' by Gerry & The Pacemakers.

The track was released in 1965 during the heyday of the Beatles but the song is still revered as a love letter to Liverpool. 

The lyrics 'People around every corner/Seem to smile and say/We don't care what your name is, boy/We'll never turn you away' are seen as an ode to a city and its people. 

It wasn't the only hit for the group - a few years earlier, they released a cover of 'You'll Never Walk Alone', a song that went to number one in the charts and has since been adopted by Liverpool FC as their anthem. 

The Real Thing | 'Children of the Ghetto' 

Liverpool's history hasn't always run smoothly. Like many parts of the UK, the Toxteth area of the city exploded into riots during 1981 following the arrest of Black man Leroy Alphonse Cooper.

Tensions had been simmering between the authorities and residents across the country with this incident the touch paper to create civil unrest. 

It was Liverpool soul band, The Real Thing, formed by Chris Amoo, Dave Smith, Kenny Davis and Ray Lake, who created the soundtrack to this period in the form of their album, '4 From 8' and its masterpiece, 'Children of the Ghetto'. 

The record was inspired by growing up in Liverpool 8, an area of the city which connects Toxteth to the city's docks and waterfront. 

The group had already achieved huge success by the time this record was released - most notably with hits 'You To Me (Are Everything)' and 'Can You Feel the Force?'

Find out more

Shack | 'Streets of Kenny' 

Michael (or Mick) Head, songwriter behind the Pale Fountains, Michael Head and the Magical World of the Strands, and Shack, has long been regarded as one of Merseyside's most underrated songwriters. 

His story revolves around battling addiction with this song, 'Streets of Kenny', taken from Shack's 1999 album, 'HMS Fable'. 

With lyrics, 'Searching through the streets again/through the streets of Kenny/I'm looking for the boys again/Can't find Joe or Benny', the song directly references Mick's hunt for drugs in Kensington, an area of Liverpool. 

It's powerful, emotive guitar music from an artist the NME once declared as our greatest living songwriter.

Thankfully, he continues to record and release brilliant music with his latest record, 'Loophole', released under the name of Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band.

Find out more

Echo & The Bunnymen | 'Villiers Terrace' 

The album 'Crocodile' was released by Echo and the Bunnymen in 1980 and cemented the arrival of the band as one of Liverpool's finest.

The group, led by singer Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant and initially managed by music industry impresario Bill Drummond, were part of a wave of Liverpool acts to dominate the landscape of guitar music in the eighties.

Drummond of course went on to overhaul the pop industry with the KLF and documented his obsession with the band and the character of Echo in his brilliant book, '45'. 

'Crocodile' featured some of their finest moments including 'Pictures on my Wall', 'Rescue' and 'Villiers Terrace', the latter a dark and brooding moment in their musical arsenal and supposedly about a local drug den where users lie in stupors.

Lyrics include the lines 'There's people rolling' round on the carpet/Mixing up the medicine' and impressed Factory boss Tony Wilson so much, he described it as one of the best songs ever written. 

Suzanne Vega | 'In Liverpool' 

American singer songwriter Suzanne Vega has enjoyed a musical career since the mid-eighties with the magic of her a cappella track, 'Tom's Diner', a career highlight. 

Her 1992 album, '99.9F°', mixed up folk with more electronic textures, including 'In Liverpool', a song inspired by a lost love she once met in the city.

This was an experience which the artist documented in her diaries, then utilised as inspiration for the song. 

Some have said that the lyrics - 'No sound, down/In this part of town/Except for the boy in the belfry/He's crazy, he's throwing himself/Down from the top of the tower/Like a hunchback in heaven' refer to the Liver Building, the iconic piece of Liverpool architecture that sits next to the Mersey. 

Half Man Half Biscuit | 'The Oblong of Dreams'

Half Man Half Biscuit are a cult indie rock outfit from Birkenhead with a penchant for acerbic, satirical lyrics and a winning way with a hook. 

Ever since they first got together in the mid-eighties, the group has stuck to a defiantly left of centre furrow of rock music.

Their song, 'Oblong of Dreams', taken from 'The Voltarol Years', the band's fifteenth album, is a typically weird and wonderful song. 

This track is an ode to the Wirral (dubbed 'The Oblong of Dreams') with the lyrics taking in a tour of the landscape. It refers to different locations, including Leasowe Lighthouse, Thor's Stone and Woodchurch alongside a slightly more esoteric reference to Wirral science-fiction author Olaf Stapledon.

Find out more